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Sisko Haikala

Criticism in theEnlightenment

Perspectives on Koselleck’s Kritik und Krise Study

Professor Reinhart Koselleck’s early work Kritik und Kriseranks among the classics in the history of Western thought.This study, first published in 1959, is based on his dissertation

presented at Heidelberg (1954), and several German editions havelater been issued. It has been translated into Spanish, Italian, French,and finally, in 1988, into English. How can interest in the study beexplained? Does this shortly 40-year-old study still have somethingto offer to modern research on the Enlightenment, or is it primarilyinteresting purely from the point of view of the historiography ofhistory?

Kritik und Krise is a study concerning the European Enlighten-ment and its origins. It essentially concentrates only on the timefrom the end of the religious wars to the beginning of the FrenchRevolution in 1789 and analyses the ideas of key figures and lesser-known German, English, and French thinkers of the time. Its mainthemes are the emergence of the great innovation of the “century ofcritique”, the public sphere maintained by private citizens and theexplicit and implicit functions of public opinion. Yet as the subtitleEine Studie zur Pathogenese der bürgerlichen Welt (Enlighten-

ment and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society) and the Intro-duction indicate, the specific perspective in the study centres aroundthe relationship between the past and present. The author seems toregard both the inability of men and societies to resolve the contra-diction between morality and politics and the inability of people totransform their crisis-consciousness into rational political action,instead of escaping their difficulties to a Utopia, as the ‘malady’ ofthe modern world. The inability to face realities and the competitionbetween sharply differing Utopian philosophies of history weakenthe chances of dealing with problems in a peaceful manner and pavethe way to catastrophes. In the first editions of Kritik und KriseKoselleck linked his dark insights into the status of the modern worldto the Cold War, the seemingly irreconcilable ideological conflictbetween the Soviet Union and the United States, the threat of nuclearwar, and the tensions following emancipation development in theThird World (Koselleck 1973, ix ff., 1f.). Later, the author has admittedthat a great German dilemma motivated his research by announcingthat one of the initial purposes was to research the historical pre-conditions of National Socialism (Koselleck 1988, 1). He thus tracesthe roots of modern ‘sickness’ to the Enlightenment. Due to this,and despite the fact that it is mainly the reader’s responsibility todraw conclusions regarding the impact of the Enlightenment on thepresent, this study can be characterized along the same lines asHorkheimer’s and Adorno’s Dialektik der Aufklärung; i.e. as awork, which studies the limitations and weaknesses of Enlightenmentthought and which, from a larger perspective, can be considered apessimistic critique of Western rationality and its belief in progress.

“Put in a nutshell, this book attempts to offer a genetic theory ofthe modern world”; these were Koselleck’s own words in the 1988preface of Kritik und Krise. At that time he himself consideredthat the book’s chief strength was that he had been attempting tofind the roots of 20th century Utopianism in the Enlightenment andto create an ideal-typical framework for the development of worldhistory from the French Revolution onwards as the most significantaspects of his work (Koselleck 1988, 1ff.; citation p. 4). This way ofposing questions based on the problems of the present has beenamong the major reasons why Kritik und Krise has attracted a

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great deal of attention, although this has given cause for criticism aswell. Doubts have even circulated around the issue of whether thisbook can be considered actual historiography. According to an earlycutting review it does not deal with the Enlightenment but is ratheran assessment of the present through the philosophy of history, whichrelies on its author’s learning in the field of history.1 This type ofevaluation is, of course, unreasonably one-sided and does not complywith Koselleck’s intentions, yet it most likely includes hidden doubtsshared by many historians that research essentially dominated bypresent interests, or of which the primary starting point is disappoint-ment with the results of modernization, often reduce the view of thepast and rarely do justice to their subject. Therefore, when consideringthe significance of Koselleck’s study on the origins of the modernworld’s malady, a key issue is how relevant we can consider hisinterpretation of the Enlightenment on the basis of current research.

Koselleck’s understanding of the Enlightenment is based on histheory concerning the origins of Absolutism, which takes Hobbes’Leviathan as its starting point. Carl Schmitt, a former critic ofLiberalism and Parliamentarism, has also influenced this theory withhis interpretations of Hobbes and the genesis of the modern state.2

Absolutism, as interpreted by Koselleck, became the means by whichsociety was pacified in the historical situation of the religious civilwars. A precondition for this was the firm separation of politicsfrom morality and the subordination of morality to politics: politicswas separated off as the sovereign’s own sphere, which existedoutside religious and confessional quarrels and in which norms greatlydiffering from private morals, the demands of the raison d’état,were applied. In order to achieve societal peace, ordinary citizenswere pushed out of the sphere of politics. They were left with theprivate sphere, in which the individual had a free conscience in issuesof religion and morals. This separation also meant that the individualwas on the one hand a subject lacking political power and the rightto criticize the sovereign, while on the other he was a human beingwith free will and power to make decisions in the sphere of morality.The dualism of politics and morals created by Absolutism is, accordingto Koselleck, a precondition for the Enlightenment and its criticismand, as a matter of fact, included the seeds of destruction for

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Absolutism. As secularization progressed, the subjects – especiallythe new bourgeois elite – shifted their focus away from religiousquestions of conscience and turned to presenting moral evaluations,i.e. criticism of earthly matters (Koselleck 1973, 11ff., 41ff.).

When analysing the development of the concept of criticism andthe gradual broadening of the targets of this criticism in the “Republicof Letters” in the 18th century and the organizations of the Enlighten-ment, the author provides interesting perspectives on much discussedproblems, which concern the birth processes of a civic society, espe-cially the origins of public opinion, new types of civic organizations,and hidden politicization during the Enlightenment. According toKoselleck, the essential feature of the Enlightenment is the devel-opment that enabled the enlargement of the private inner sphere leftfor the subjects and extended itself into the sphere of politicsdominated by the government. This situation was at hand when criticsbegan to express their opinions of laws. Criticism and its “tribunal ofreason” developed into an indirect, cloaked political power withinthe state, for which the Enlightenment philosophers demandedsovereignty and which eventually also developed into an actualauthority, “the Fourth Estate”.(Koselleck 1973, 41ff., 94f.)

Unlike Jürgen Habermas, for example, who has described theorigins of a “bourgeois public sphere” in the 18th century from aneo-Marxist perspective in a rather positive manner as an emancipat-ing and progressive force destroying the structures of late feudalisticsociety (see Habermas 1962/1974), and many scholars who haveconsidered the public opinion of the Enlightenment as the beginningof the democratization processes of the modern world (e.g. Jacob1994, 108f.), Koselleck raises pronouncedly issues which he regardsas the dangerous and self-deceiving sides of bourgeois emancipationin the Enlightenment. According to his central thesis, criticism had abuilt-in mechanism of crisis provocation, even though eighteenth-century people failed to recognize it. In the Enlightenment, criticismwas understood as a process, continuous dialogue, in which anessential part of a subject was the argumentation for and against inorder to discover the incontrovertible truth in the future. Thisseemingly innocent starting point made critics believe unrealisticallyin their own neutrality and provided all of them with an absolute

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freedom to present their opinions in public. In Koselleck’s opinion,this was a way of smuggling the bellum omnium contra omnesback into the society – although in the form of a spiritual battle atthis time (Koselleck 1973, 81ff., 90ff.). During the generation ofEnlighteners following Voltaire’s criticism – for reasons, which theauthor does not explain very thoroughly – lost its process nature, attaineda demand for supremacy with tyrannical features, and attempts weremade to monopolize the truth as the property of only one side, that ofthe Enlightenment philosophers (Koselleck 1973, 98ff.).

In Koselleck’s interpretation criticism in the Enlightenment,despite all the appeals to morals, reason and nature, was funda-mentally political criticism turning particularly against absolutegovernment. He considers as essential and relating to the patho-genesis of the modern world the fact that the proponents of theEnlightenment could not or did not want to be aware of the politicalnature of the Enlightenment process. They regarded themselves asunpolitical and wanted to avoid all conflicts with the Absolutist system.This changed criticism into hypocrisy, drove the Enlightenment intoUtopia, and more and more certainly into crises. One essential meansof cloaking with which eighteenth-century actors, according toKoselleck, tried intellectually to avoid confrontation with Absolutism,was connected with the philosophy of progress and orientation forthe future. This was seen not only in the numerous predictions ofrevolutions and crises in the latter half of the 18th century, butespecially in the fact that the Enlightenment thinkers themselvesengaged in planning the future by developing Utopian philosophiesof history. According to these thought constructions firmly anchoredin the belief in progress, the faults at hand did not necessarily demandthe subjects’ concrete involvement in the present since the problemswould inevitably be resolved in the future positively and withoutviolence – and just like the creators of these philosophies hadanticipated them being resolved. Philosophies of history on the onehand act as tools of self-deception; on the other hand they act asindirect political powers, because they, of course, invertedly includea judgement upon the existing political and social conditions (Koselleck1973, 105ff.).

In fact Koselleck builds the Enlightenment into a process, which

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– in spite of the intentions of contemporaries – leads to the FrenchRevolution, and he wants to offer an answer to the classic questiondiscussed even by Tocqueville of why the Enlighteners, who hadengaged in severe criticism of the political and societal system, donot seem to have understood the potentially revolutionary conclusionsof their own ideals. According to Tocqueville’s famous reply, thetendency to engage in abstract radical thinking was caused by theinexperience of Enlightenment philosophers and the high nobility inpractical politics during the Absolutist system (Tocqueville 1856/1988,229ff.). Koselleck, on the other hand, constructs his explanation onthe lack of political consciousness described above: remainingattached to this very nonpolitical self-image was fatal for self-under-standing and understanding of reality for the Enlighteners, becauseit only broadened the conflict between morals and politics, betweensociety and state, prevented rational political action, and deprivedthe people of the Enlightenment of the ability to put their owncertainties of faith into relative terms. The more the political natureof problems was concealed or was covered up intentionally, the dee-per the crisis. Koselleck perceives this mechanism as leading to thedestruction of Absolutism in the French Revolution and to the per-manent state of crises predicted by Rousseau and to the era of rev-olutions; that is, to the modern world. Koselleck links the road toterror during the French Revolution to those demands for truth andsupremacy, which he believes have dominated the criticism of theEnlightenment and public opinion at the end of the 18th century, andwhich he largely seems to substitute with Rousseau’s idea of volontégénérale. He gives the Genevan in other respects as well a significantrole in his theory on the genesis of the modern world by joining withthose exegetes, in whose opinion the ideals of “total democracy” inContrat social and the general will include the basis for later ideas ofdictatorship and totalitarianism (Cf. Koselleck 1973, 132ff., 137, 138).

Critique and Crises is a fascinating interpretation. Its aspectrelating to the malady of the modern world is unlikely to have lostsignificance at the end of the 20th century, in an atmosphereinfluenced considerably by the citizens’ programmatic “non-politicality” due to their weariness of politics. Furthermore,Koselleck’s work may interest postmodernists, who have long

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discussed the failure of the “Enlightenment project” and theweaknesses of Western rationalism. Yet, as a description of its actualtopic, 18th-century ideas, the study is somewhat problematic in somerespects. Above all, the understanding of the Enlightenment formingthe basis of the research is controversial. It is clearly based upon theold conception of France as the ideal-typical model nation for theEuropean Enlightenment and on the radicalization of the Enlightenmentfrom one generation to another with the French Revolution at theend of this continuation. The foundations of this type of understandingof the Enlightenment were, as a matter of fact, created during theFrench Revolution, when, on the one hand, the revolutionariesdeclared themselves the executors of the will of the Enlightenment,on the other hand, Augustin Barruel and many other anti-revolutionaries bothered by conspiracy hysteria started to accusethe Enlightenment of beginning the Revolution and its terror. In morerational versions, the idea of the development of France as a crystal-lization of the Enlightenment and of the Enlightenment as the causeof the Revolution has long existed in historiography. However, it isevident that this type of idea includes the supposition of unity in theEnlightenment, is easily susceptible to criticism and is clearly toonarrow and deterministic to describe the Enlightenment and itssignificance for modernization.

According to the pluralistic views nowadays increasingly gainingsupport, the Enlightenment should be viewed as a far-embracingcomplex of ideas, for which the common multinational fundamentaltendencies were rationality, criticality, secularization, and reformismevident in all areas of life but which obtained original features ineach country’s special circumstances. The Enlightenment was,without a doubt, an ideology of changes, but its goals were reforms,not a revolution. France, the only country to have a revolution in the18th century, is thus more of an exception than a model of the potentialeffects of the Enlightenment. The gradual radicalization of theEnlightenment was merely one, and not even the most dominant,feature of it. The gradual politicization of the Enlightenment is moreessential in this respect, of which – as Koselleck emphasizes – mostof the enlightened men were not really distinctly conscious. Othercrucial features were the easily noticeable expansion of Enlighten-

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ment culture that, in the last decades of the 18th century, within theCentral European countries embraced already quite large portionsof society’s middle and upper strata, and the division of the Enlighten-ment into numerous unpolitical and political, moderate, radical, andeven more or less conservative movements drawing its mainexplanation from the strong growth in the support for the Enlighten-ment (e.g. Möller 1986, esp. 19ff., 36ff., 298ff. Gumbrecht/Reichardt/Schleich 1981, 3ff.).

The diversity of opinions makes the old interpretation of theuniversal, naive belief in progress in the Enlightenment vulnerable,on which Koselleck seems to base his thesis of the Enlightenersescaping into Utopian philosophies of history. In reality, many of theEnlighteners perceived history as a continuous struggle between theEnlightenment and counter-Enlightenment, in which even smallprogress achieved was always seen to be in danger and in need ofprotection (e.g. Hinske 1981, lviii ff.). The pluralistic understandingof the Enlightenment forces us also to put Koselleck’s view that thekey issue in the Enlightenment had been hidden and partly openopposition to Absolutism into relative terms. Analysing the issueobjectively, it seems self-evident that the Enlightenment andAbsolutism were in their essential goals in contrast with one another.As is well known, particularly in the French Enlightenment thecriticism of Absolutism started to emerge rather visibly from themid-18th century onwards, as the problems of state finances andtax reform quarrels worsened. There is also no denying the fact thatpublic criticism and public opinion were perhaps even unintentionally,phenomena which called Absolutism into question, since, accordingto the old theory of Absolutism, only the sovereign was a publicfigure and a representative of common good, whereas the subjectswere understood to be merely supporting particular interests (Baker1990, 169). It is also clear that both the monarchs as well as otherrulers often felt public opinion to be a threat to them, which is whycriticism in the Enlightenment often had to resort to different detoursor became shallow due to self-censorship.

On the other hand, the eighteenth-century consciousness –which, of course, cannot be freely dismissed when studying thefunctions of Enlightenment thought – also reveals features favourable

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to Absolutism and sides, which merit the conclusion that a consider-able number of the Enlighteners failed to consider Absolutism themost urgent problem of the time. They rather understood as theirreal enemies many other phenomena upholding traditionalism; suchas the Church, religious orthodoxy, the privileges of the nobility, thefaults of the judicial system, outdated educational systems, or old-fashioned mentalities. When discussing the relationship betweencriticism in the Enlightenment and Absolutism, the fact that the new“bourgeois publicity” was not seeking battle rather than dialoguewith the rulers ought to be considered. Public opinion wanted toappeal to and persuade the rulersand thus influence the handling ofcommon matters. Especially in the countries of Absolutism, publiccitizens’ discourse became a sort of a substitute for missing politicalrights. Even the social history of the Enlightenment casts doubt onthe view of the Enlightenment as a real counterforce to Absolutism.Not only on the periphery of Europe but also at the core, the supportersof the Enlightenment were mainly officials, teachers, and othersemployed by the State, or intelligentsia dependent on the rulers’favour. Therefore, they were more likely to identify themselves aspartners of the State than as its opponents.

Absolutism also gained advocates of various degrees of activityin the Enlightenment. In France many of the physiocrats supportedEnlightened Absolutism, and, for the German Enlightenment, it wasoutright typical to be willing to compromise with Absolutism and topossess great optimism at least until the 1780s for the chances ofEnlightened Absolutism and “the princely revolution”. The Enlighten-ment aimed on a wide front at demolishing the old structures thatwere felt to be irrational, yet Absolutism, at least its Enlightenedversion, could not necessarily be equated with traditionalism. Reformprograms of enlightened Absolutism facilitated in many Enlighteners’opinion and partly in practice the general reform goals of the En-lightenment were able to promote a certain degree of modernization.Thanks to this, belief in the gradual reformation of Absolutism wasnot impossible.

It is also rather uncertain whether the numerous debates of theEnlightenment on the natural and inalienable rights of people, freedom,or the mutual superiority of the form of government can be reduced

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primarily to an opposition to Absolutism in the continental Enlighten-ment before the year 1789, as we have traditionally become used tothink. It is worth considering whether these include more essentiallydemands for – not political but – greater civil rights and so-calledequality of opportunities. For example on the Continent, anglophilia,which many researchers have perceived as an expression of anti-Absolutism and concealed Constitutionalism, turns out at least in thecase of Germany after a closer look to be mainly admiration for theBritish freedom of expression, protection of law, and the possibilitiesof social ascendancy, and the whole discussion of “British freedom”begins to accentuate towards evaluations of the political system onlyin the politicized atmosphere created by the French Revolution. Eventhen, the subject in the comparisons did not primarily centre aroundAbsolutism but the new Constitution of France (Haikala 1985; cf.Maurer 1987).

Kritik und Krise contains such methodological statements andinteresting conceptual analysis which anticipate Koselleck’s laterorientation towards the development of methodology for conceptualhistory. Especially in the footnotes to the study, the author deals withthe history of several concepts and their content in a way which isfamiliar to the readers of Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe.3 Further-more, the study is linked with later conceptual history, for example,through the view that in the framing of research questions knownphilosophers and anonymous pamphlets are considered of equal valueas sources, and in the intention expressed in the Introduction to linkthe methods of Geistesgeschichte to analysis of sociologicalconditions (Koselleck 1973, 4, 5). Due to its practical solutions,however, the study still represents rather traditional history of ideas.The deductions on what is dominant and typical in Enlightenmentthinking mostly rest on a few known Enlightenment thinkers. This,of course, is problematic from the point of view of generalizationson the results, although the notes do include quite a few examples ofsuch statements of lesser-known writers which are almost parallelto the quoted thoughts of the great philosophers.

Kritik und Krise has also been criticized of ignoring the socialand political context of the thought. The work has thus been viewedas describing more the Enlightenment thinking’s potential than the

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actual social and political functions. (Voges 1987, 15ff.) Thejustification of this criticism cannot wholly be denied, since the criticismof the Enlightenment and such phenomena indicating crisis, whichstarted to strengthen during the last quarter century in Europeancentres, is hardly possible to explain thoroughly by ignoring theconcrete situations or by not placing the thinking in the relevantframework of socio-economic change, political development, growthin counter-Enlightenment forces, and a deepening crisis in norms.

One obvious shortcoming in Koselleck’s study is the little attentiondirected towards the fact that also the counterforces influenced theproblems of the Enlightenment and its failures, and that, due tomutually competing ideologies, these attempts at monopolizing thetruth remained mere attempts in the public sphere. An approachcentring around the dialogue or a conscious aspiration to researchthe differences in thinking, conflicts, and controversy – characteristicsof later conceptual history – could have perhaps even in this caseperceived the differences in the societal meanings and confrontationsin Enlightenment thought better than the methods of the traditionalhistory of ideas. At the same time, they could possibly have decreasedthe danger of being excessively abstract in the study of the historyof ideas.

The great theory in Kritik und Krise on the dead-ends ofEnlightenment thought remains somewhat inadequately justified, andthe study cannot without reservations be considered a universaldescription of the nature of the Enlightenment, of its hidden meanings,or its consequences. However, the merits of the book are indisputable.These include, among other things, inspiring analysis of the thinkingof European Enlightenment thinkers, including many new perspec-tives, and perhaps above all the thematization of many interestingresearch issues.

Koselleck has problematised in particular the question of publicand secret sphere dialectics, as well as the significance of the new“sociability” and Freemasonry in Kritik und Krise in a way that hasbeen influential in later research. Intensive research into Enlighten-ment organizations has been taking place in historiography for quitea while. In it, a great deal of attention has been directed towardssecret societies and especially to Freemasonry, the most popular

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organization. A considerable problem is still the question discussedby Koselleck: why did secrets and secret societies become popularin a culture which otherwise fought for the freedom of the press andthe principle of publicity and in which public debate became a newimportant way of influencing politics.

Koselleck is not interested in the esoteric teachings of the Free-masons, Illuminates, and other secret societies apart from the socialfunctions within the arcanum sphere created by them, which heperceives as crystallizing the dialectics of morals and politics in theEnlightenment. Freemasonry he interprets as being a civic societyformed in the internal emigration within a state. Within this civicsociety different laws to those existing in a state or the official societyof ancien régime applied, because in the Masonic ideology principlestypical of rational Enlightenment, such as the mutual equality of themembers and freedom, the aspiration to moral self-improvement,and tolerance were emphasized. Masonic secrets he regards asprotection against the State and also the established Church. Accord-ing to Koselleck, Freemasons explicitly rejected politics – politicaland religious debates were even forbidden in the rules, yet despitethis, or maybe more correctly because of it, Freemasonry was anindirect political power turning against Absolutism. This was for thevery reason that the separation from the state and stress on virtueindirectly emphasized the fact that the State and the existing hierarchywithin the society were suffering a deficiency in morals (Koselleck1973, 49ff., 61ff., 68ff.).

When it comes to the remarkably persistent allegations even inresearch from the end of the 18th century to the Second World Warof the Freemasons’ revolutionary character and secret influence onthe beginning of the French Revolution, it should be stressed thatKoselleck is not of one of these conspiracy theoreticians, even thoughsome of his secondary sources are of this nature. Freemasonry isfor him, like the public sphere, an institution of indirect political power.In his evaluations of the connections between French Freemasonry,the Revolution and Jacobinism, he seems to be cautiously nearingAugustin Cochin, who was recently ‘rehabilitated’ by François Furet.Cochin also considered the Enlightenment organizations as secretideological forces undermining the legitimacy of the ancien régime.

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To him, Freemasonry, although the members were not conspirators,was part of the mechanism of politicization leading to the Revolution(Furet 1978/1988, 257ff.; cf. Koselleck 1973, 64f., 187f.).

Especially in German research into Freemasonry, the questionsposed by Koselleck have been repeatedly utilized directly or indirectly,and he has rightly been credited with the fact that the history ofFreemasonry cannot any longer be characterized as being pre-occupied with curiosities rather than as an essential part of researchon the culture of the Enlightenment. The work of the last decadeshas produced an abundance of new, more reliable information onthe lodges and their members, but we have become less certain thanbefore of, for example, the ideological aspects of Freemasonry, whichis why in recent research the emphasis differs somewhat from theinterpretations in Kritik und Krise. Koselleck’s thesis of the indirectpolitical significance of the Freemasons and Illuminates has not beendisproved, but his views on the anti-Absolutism of Freemasonry –that, in many countries, found support even among the princes andthe court – need revision. Newer research also does not present theGerman Illuminates, a secret society representing radical Enlighten-ment, as political or dangerous to the ancien régime as was commonin the 1950s research situation (see especially Agethen 1984). All inall, the researchers’ focus has shifted from questioning Absolutismtowards another direction indicated by Koselleck; that is, thesociability of the Enlightenment and the phenomena anticipating thecreation of a new political culture as well as questions relating to thesignificance of the secret societies in the formation of a new societalmentality, new elite, and a civic society. On the other hand, moreand more attention has been paid to the fact that 18th-century Free-masonry cannot without residuals be substituted with the rationalEnlightenment: its esoteric teachings right from the start includednot only rational but irrational elements, and many kinds of mystical,newly religious, and alchemistic ideas found their home in the Masonicand Paramasonic organizations.

As concerns research on public opinion during the Enlightenment,Kritik und Krise, in addition to Jürgen Habermas’ slightly morerecent piece of research Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit (Trans-formation of the Public Sphere), is one of the basic works on the

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subject. Of particular value in it is bringing the theme of non-politicalityand “non-political politicization” into the foreground. In the publicityof the Enlightenment, the naive and uncritical beliefs of thecontemporaries, that they were the mouthpieces of truth and dis-interested caretakers of humanity as a whole, were undoubtedlyconspicuous. The reasons for these delusions of neutrality can prob-ably be found in many sources. Partly this must have been influencedby the traditional dislike for “politicking” of all kinds, and towardsboth confessional and political party groups which were substitutedin the eighteenth-century understanding usually with fanaticism andegoistic, particular interest-seeking (cf. e.g. Sellin 1974, esp. 827f.,842; Beyme 1974, 687ff.). The overt optimism typical of the En-lightenment as to the ability of human reason to reach objective truths,and the understanding of public opinion as indicating the will of thepeople (or more likely of its most Enlightened part) and representingthe common good also had a similar influence (e.g. Baker 1990,196ff.). Recent research into the rise of professionalism has alsoopened up interesting perspectives on the matter. One reason forthe belief in impartiality was probably the fact that the Enlighteners,who were mostly the educated bourgeois or academically educatednobles, regarded themselves as the meritocratic elite of the societyand considered that education had made them experts and bearersof objective knowledge (La Vopa 1992, 110ff.). However,Koselleck’s explanation linking criticism to the sphere of moralitymay actually have considerable relevance. Also, it is hard to disputethe justification of Koselleck’s interpretation that the criticism of theEnlightenment often displayed the tendencies to monopolize the truthand show intolerance towards those holding different opinions.

As a matter of fact, Koselleck’s theory of the key role of moralargumentation, unrealistic thinking and the difficulty of allowing theright of existence to competing trains of thought may offer at leastpartial explanations for many of the special features of the Enlighten-ment era. One of these could be to explain the political problems bymeans of the conspiracy theses, which became more common inthe 18th century. The most famous of the conspiracy theories is thethesis developed by counter-revolutionary alarmists during the FrenchRevolution claiming that the Enlightenment Philosophers, Freemasons,

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Illuminates, and the Jacobins were joining forces in a conspiracyaimed at a world revolution. One could argue that this thoughtstructure has changed into the malady of the modern world, becausethe same basic logic has been repeated in numerous later conspiracytheories; the groups labelled as the enemies of society changed toinclude among others Jews, Liberals, Socialists and Communists(Bieberstein 1976). However it is to be noted that during the 18thcentury also the revolutionaries and the sworn proponents of theEnlightenment both in Europe and in America developed their ownconspiracy theses. One example of this are the claims of a crypto-Catholic conspiracy which aroused great controversy in Germany inthe 1780s; claims which were first presented in public by the well-known advocates of the Enlightenment in Berlin: J. E. Biester, Fried-rich Gedike, and Friedrich Nicolai. Basically, the matter relates tothe Enlighteners’ inability to process problems politically, that is, tounderstand the strengthening of different counter-Enlightenmentmovements. The dispute quickly developed into a propaganda warbetween the supporters of the Enlightenment and its critics, in whichthe opposing side also resorted to the conspiracy thesis by accusingthe Enlighteners of a deist conspiracy.4 Conspiracy theories, in whichthe explanation for the misfortunes of the world are always reducedto a person’s will and intentional actions, benefited from the secularizedideas of the Enlightenment that history can be made by men and thatevents in the world can be explained by men. Their logic was ofcourse substantially entangled with moral questions and they, in thewords of Gordon S. Wood, “represented an effort, perhaps in retro-spect a last desperate effort, to hold men personally and morallyresponsible for their actions” (Wood 1982, 411).

As a whole, Kritik und Krise has not attained the status of aclassic due to the fact that its author has later become a famousdeveloper and greatly respected researcher of conceptual history,and its significance is not limited to the study being an interestingexample of Cold War historiography. The seemingly durablecontribution to research of this almost 40-year-old book can be foundin the extremely fruitful research questions and fascinating inter-pretations which, in spite of the criticism raised, have offered plentyof stimuli and challenges for later research.

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Notes

1 This was Helmut Kohn’s review of Kritik und Krise, in HistorischeZeitschrift 1961, vol. 192, p. 666.

2 See Koselleck 1973, 18ff., 166 (notes 65,68,70), cf. p. xii; Schmitt 1938/1982,esp. 85ff.. For Schmitt’s influence on Koselleck see also Popkin 1991, 82f..

3 See for example in: Koselleck 1988 the words ‘politics’ p. 42 fn. 5; ‘critique’and ‘crisis’ p. 103f. fn. 15; ‘revolution’ p. 160f. fn. 6.

4 Haikala 1996, 54 ff.. – Koselleck as a matter of fact analyses one of the keyworks surrounding this controversy, E. A.A. von Göchhausen’s Ent-hüllung des Systems der Weltbürger-Republik, but links it, exposinghimself to criticism, to Illuminates: see Koselleck 1973, 113f..

Bibliography

Koselleck, Reinhart (1973) Kritik und Krise. Eine Studie zur Pathogeneseder bürgerlichen Welt.

Koselleck, Reinhart (1988) Critique and Crisis: Enlightenment and thePathogenesis of Modern Society, Oxford etc. 1988

***

Agethen, Manfred (1984) Geheimbund und Utopie. Illuminaten,Freimaurer und deutsche Spätaufklärung. München.

Baker, Keith Michael (1990) Inventing the French Revolution. Essays onFrench Political Culture in the Eighteenth Century, Cambridge etc.

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